Little else is known about the device, but it's not hard to envisage a Google alternative to the Apple TV, Western Digital WD TV Live and Roku set-top streamers, all of which present net-hosted content on your TV screen.

Google has its music service and, through YouTube, a video on demand offering too. What it lacks, perhaps, is a unified brand along the lines of Apple's iTunes to bring them together, but maybe it considers that consumers are happy with its sub-brands.

Either way, it provides the company with yet another way of monitoring what kind of entertainment you like and using that data to make sure you and yours are fed with appropriate ads when you're browsing at home.